Language: English
Playtimes
23 november | 15:30 – 16:15 & 19:15 – 20:00
African, queer, and (almost) home
Gambian Spoken Word-artist Sunni Lamin Barrow has been in the Netherlands for four years—precisely the term of a Dutch cabinet, who can’t be bothered to do anything but fight over matters like asylum-seeker policies and sex education. Sunni spent his ‘term’ in the Netherlands on more constructive matters: he made stories—stories about his life up to now, and about what it means to be Afrikaans and queer. Those stories take up the struggle of being a refugee due to sexual orientation and—through trial and error—transplanting a different version of yourself glued to your old self in a new country. Can you even do that? How? (And do you have to?)
In his solo theater performance, A Fist Of Tongues (nominated for the BNG Theater Prize 2024), Sunni uses storytelling, visuals, sound and dance to take you through his life so far. It features poems and stories he wrote in his home country—where being openly LGBTQIA+ is forbidden—as well as work about his experience in an asylum center in Budel, North Brabant, where he also came face-to-face with homophobia. A must for anyone in need of empathy and humanity, rather than cold facts and political fury.
In disarming fashion, Spoken Word-artist Sunni Lamin Barrow tells the story of his origins in A Fist of Tongues and gives insight into what it is like to always be an outsider in some way. Barrow is a performer who shoots straight on this. – (Jury Report BNG Theater Prize 2024)
– Juryrapport BNG Theaterprijs 2024